Lynch came to Canada in 1960. He left school to become a cartoonist for the Toronto Star and then served as a photographer for a number of small-town newspapers. This led to work in film, including a 90-minute documentary on Penthouse magazine commissioned by its publisher, Bob Guccione. His first feature was The Hard Part Begins, considered to be a classic of early English-Canadian cinema. This was followed by the box-office hit Prom Night, a prototypical ‘slasher’ film starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen. Lynch has only made movies periodically, pursuing instead a career directing for American television.[2]